I want to say something substantial about the life and death of Robin Williams, but I’m still reflecting on it. It’s too big.
My brain is stumbling and stuttering on it all.
Here’s a short something that’s been percolating today and I hope to find more thoughtful things to say later. It’s just sad and it’s hard to write when I’m sad.
A life cut short is sad and tragic. But, a life negated (taken. i.e. in a murder of one’s self) instead of lived is incomprehensible. Incomprehensible to a healthy mind.
The instinct to live is so primal that we avoid accidents and death reflexively. A deer crosses our path and we slam on the brakes without ever thinking that we are making the choice to save our lives. We duck when we hear loud sounds.
But, too much thinking that can go badly.
Depression is illness. One that kills. It grabs hard and won’t let go. Chronic depression is like a blindness that never really ends until you do. You can get through life, but you are impaired the whole time.
Having struggled with it in fits and stages since early adolescence, I’m more devastated by the idea of depression beating Williams than I thought I’d be. I also compensated for it all by trying to be the funniest person in the room.
Eventually, I looked for healing instead. Sometimes I feel like I’ve found it, at least in part.
“[of Depression] All it wants is to get you in a room alone and kill you.” –Harvey Fierstein
May his soul be now at peace.